HSBC AT1 investors are not too happy about the risk of seeing the bank flagged as an "unreliable entity" by the Chinese authorities. Arguably, this move in AT1 is much more significant than the equity move (which happens in a sea of red anyway)
(& now, this isn't about #FinCEN)
& no*, sorry!
For those unfamiliar with the concept, what is it ?
It's a list Chinese authorities are said to be preparing which should stop companies on the list from engaging in import or export with china 1/2
Also from investing in China and which could also ban or restrict individuals from entering China.
Lots of "could" and "may" because the list and its impact are not final yet. But HSBC has been rumoured many times to be on it - mostly because of the Huwaei story
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For those of you trying to make sense of that story, here’s a recap. It’s wild.
RBI is a large Austrian bank formerly making 50% of its profits in Russia. After Russia invaded Ukraine, what happens to this biz is obviously their key financial, strategic and political question
Everyone in the “West” is pushing for a full exit but it’s not that easy because there’s also Russian law, RBI staff on the ground in Russia, clients, etc., no easy buyer to find and some argue selling for à like SG did is just handing out money to Putin’s cronies.
In Feb 2023 things start getting a bit awkward for RBI: it receives a request for information from OFAC – but we didn't really get to know what it was about.
What's going to be the costs of the Crowdstrike outage for the insurance industry? Impossible to know precisely but Mediobanca has a nice breakdown explaining why it won't be massive.
There are 3 areas of losses:
- cancelled flights
- Business interruption
- Cyber policies
1/n
Cancelled flights: reports are approx 5000 flights cancelled per day, still ongoing (backlog). That's big but 2010 Icelandic volcano had 100k cancelations ut MunRe explained the insured losses were low munichre.com/en/company/med…
BI for a week is not big. For example Swiss Re paid 1.5bn for the entire Covid lockdown. This is not even remotely the same
Thoughts about what's next in France + some important budget geekery in the middle. A long thread.
There is obviously no party capable of governing, But the two most important figures for me are approx
- RN + LFI = 214, 256 if we add EELV and PCF
- LR + PS + ENS = 131+162=293
In practice, this means that there is no “immediate” majority for votes of no confidence LFI + RN and that it will take the vote of one bit of the three “moderates” to pass one. The governement will not be that unstable.
There are also important rules to keep in mind:
- The president chooses the PM but he cannot decide policy for him
- The assembly does not vote on the choice of the PM – it can just dismiss him by vote of no confidence. Even if this vote succeeds, nothing prevents the president from choosing the same PM!
Allegedly one of those hedge funds was called Segantii.
Maybe you’ve heard of them: they’re shutting down and returning all investor money after Hong Kong authorities announced a criminal insider trading probe against them for trading ahead of a …. block trade! Surprise!
If you're following French politics, you'll probably hear about a weird theory soon, as it's likely to go mainstream: Macron could resign, call for new presidential elections and run again, effectively bypassing the 2-term limit.
Is it credible? I don't think so and here's why.
The Constitution bans more than two consecutive terms.
Everyone pretty straightforwardly understands this as "Macron can't run again in 2027" (but could pull a Putin & come back in 2032.)
However the exact wording mentions "mandats consécutifs" which, some suggest, implies that if someone is a temporary president after Macron resigns (even for a few weeks) then a 3rd Macron term wouldn't be "consecutive."
By now you've probably read 10 times that Macron called parliamentary elections to put RN/Le Pen in power & wait for them to mess up so much that Macron's heir will win in 2027.
I think that's a possible scenario but not his goal at all. It misses Macron's real target.
1.- The main negative for Le Pen is that she (&her father) have always been seen as incapable of governing. They’re a protest party, nothing more. Break that taboo and you could actually help them.
2. A majority for Le Pen not certain. They've got 88 MPs, majority is 289. They scored 19% at last parliamentary elections vs 33% yesterday but were at 23% previous European elections. The two-round system makes the votes/ seats relationship highly non linear. Forecast is v hard.